Zero, unless you're on a never-endingly eventful Travelife. Although I have to admit that the odds of bumping into him in Paris' airport are higher than bumping into him in Shibuya Station, even if we both live in the general area of Shibuya, as neither of us takes the train in Tokyo.

Seeing my surprised expression, he continued, grinning: "Someone offered me an amount I couldn't refuse. The agents had forgotten to take out the "For sale" sign, you see -- typical France, of course -- so some tech guy from Palo Alto saw it from the outside and called the agent with an unbelievable offer."

He continued: "He didn't even go inside the house. Can you imagine?"

"Apparently, this guy saw the sign and the property from afar, as he was driving by, and then he supposedly jotted down the number. When he got to his hotel, he gave the number to the concierge and told him to buy it. At least this is what my agent said."

I still had this surprised look on my face, and he was obviously relishing every second of it.

AN UNUSUAL TASK FOR THE CONCIERGE

So he said: "Can you imagine a hotel concierge in the French countryside, being handed a number scribbled on a scrap of paper, and then being told to buy a villa for four million euros?"

He then grinned and said: "I'll bet that kind of request doesn't happen very often to him. I wonder what sort of tip he was given for a job like that?"

Okay. When he said four million euros, my focus got diverted from the fact that he'd sold his recently purchased villa, to the fact that it was actually a villa that cost him four million euros.

So I said: "You said it was a small property not worth writing home about."

When we'd talked in Paris, you see, he'd acted like his spur-of-the-moment villa purchase had been no big deal -- like he'd just bought the second floor of a nondescript village store for forty thousand euros.